The Tortured Souls

After ratlining (single file) back into Brodie Hall and getting yelled at while running up the stairs, we lined up on the 5^th deck and stood at attention for more than thirty minutes to an hour with sweat dripping down our backs, and all the while, we had cadre in our faces yelling at us for the smallest details that we didn't even recognize we were doing wrong. Finally the Highest ranking officer told the cadre sergeants to stand down, which then brought another thirty minutes of standing while the officer gave his speech. By this time, all of our legs were burning from standing so long that we started to fidget, the cadre wouldn't have any of that though, and they started hounding us for moving our legs to get better control of our bodies. He finally finished, and we headed off to our rooms to get ready for the next day by organizing our things, making our beds, shining shoes, and ironing shirts. At around eleven or so, they came into our rooms and told us to get ready for bed, so we changed into PT gear, got underneath our covers in the position of attention, the lights were turned off, and a hard door slam was our only good night.

For the next few days though, we roughly did the same thing, while learning new material almost every day as my buds and I learned how the system worked, we still had no clue what went on half the time. The days are a little hazy, because they went by so quickly, but waking up was probably at around five a.m. and they woke us up by banging down the door, screaming at us to get up and get changed into whatever the uniform of the day was, all the while rushing us to get done in about one to two minutes. We would then line up and get talked to for about twenty minutes, go outside to formation, eat breakfast, go somewhere to learn more about how to drill and the different types of drills, ate lunch, went back to drilling some more, ate dinner, even more training, and then started to get ready for the next day. This was sometimes broken up by a meeting on things such as why we joined the corp, how to be a good leader, sexual harassment in the actual military and why it looks bad on not just the military, but corp members everywhere, and finally, how the year would play out. That week was pure torture, but most of us made it through and survived, a few of our buds have dropped out because it was either too hard for them, they didn't want to go through the stress of the Corp of Cadets anymore, or they had other "important" things to attend to. The problem with people dropping is that they already went through the hardest week, and the Corp only gets easier (to an extent) from that week forward. All in all, the week was harsh, but the fact that we survived that week shows others that we are not like the average Joes on campus, we are lifelong buddies, we know how to take a punishment and learn from it, and we strive to be the best there is to help protect, preserve, and defend this nation. This is your live New Cadet Week reporter signing off. ‘Murika!